The present technology relates to a signal processing apparatus and method and a communication apparatus, and particularly to a signal processing apparatus and method and a communication apparatus which suppress increase of the circuit scale and the power consumption and can continuously vary the attenuation amount.
Usually, the signal level of an input signal to a variable gain amplifier circuit mounted on an RF (radio frequency) front end is attenuated using an attenuator on a stage preceding to the variable gain amplifier circuit in order to improve the distortion characteristic of the input signal. A method has been proposed which uses, as the attenuator, for example, a capacitor attenuator configured from a capacitor or a resistor attenuator configured from a resistor ladder, as disclosed, for example, in U.S. patent Ser. No. 10/138,681 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1).